The Joiners Arms, which crouches on an unlovely stretch of Hackney Road in Shoreditch, east London, is about as far removed from the bright lights of the West End as you can get in the capital.

But the distance shrank a little last week with the death of Ian Baynham, a 62-year-old civil servant who was set upon with a friend in Trafalgar Square on a night out on 25 September.

Last Tuesday, 18 days after the attack, doctors turned off the machines that were keeping Baynham alive.

The death of Baynham has emboldened many within the gay community to voice concern they are experiencing a new wave of homophobia – and the statistics suggest they are right.

According to the latest Metropolitan police figures, homophobic crime in the capital has risen by almost 20% over the last year, with 1,192 incidents recorded in the 12 months up to September this year, compared with 1,008 over the same period last year.

In the Joiners the killing has stoked fears and stirred memories of another attack.

On 28 August last year, not far from the pub, Oliver Hemsley, a 20-year-old fashion student, was set upon by a group of youths while walking with a friend.

Hemsley was stabbed repeatedly through the heart and lungs with such ferocity that his attacker's knife cut his spinal column, leaving him paralysed from the neck down. In April, Nazrul Islam, 16, of Upton Park, east London, was jailed for 10 years after pleading guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

Low-level homophobia is something that staff and customers have grown used to. "When our customers go home they often get abuse," says David Pollard, the landlord. "It's something that people tend to moan about the next evening, but sometimes they say, 'I was afraid and I had to do a bit of running.'"

The front of the pub is also pelted from time to time with eggs, which are invariably launched from passing cars.

The George and Dragon, up the road, has also had problems. One night over the summer, youths tried to storm the pub looking for trouble, while drinkers on the street dived for cover after the driver of a car deliberately swerved at them.

Richard Battye, the landlord, is puzzled by the apparent upsurge. "I really didn't see it coming because Shoreditch has been a gay area for a long, long time."

Pollard and Battye say that while the police have been "amazing" and increased patrols, many gay people are still reluctant to report homophobic abuse.

The landlords have volunteered to act as third party reporters, telling the police about the homophobic crimes their customers tell them about. In addition to introducing reporting boxes to log the crimes, a Facebook site – East London Homophobia – has been set up to allow people to report attacks online. It has attracted 1,130 members.

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, the lesbian, gay and bisexual rights group, said that the increase suggests little has altered since a Stonewall survey last year revealed that 20% of lesbian and gay people had experienced homophobic aggression over the previous three years.

"The easy answer from the police and other agencies they work with is, 'Reporting has gone up. Isn't this wonderful? Gay people now feel happy about reporting crimes'. But I'm genuinely not sure it's as easy as that," he said.

One of the flipsides of gay couples feeling more comfortable holding hands in public, Summerskill believes, is that it is much easier for those intent on gay bashing to find victims.

And while he concedes that much of the homophobia that soured the gay community's relationship with the police has disappeared, he fears prejudice may have given way to indifference. Many gay people who report crime, he adds, "are not taken very seriously by police. All police forces should be monitoring levels of homophobic violence in the same way they monitor racist violence."

Acting Inspector Charlie Earwicker, of the Weavers safer neighbourhoods team in Tower Hamlets, says the police are doing their best by holding public meetings, stepping up patrols, visiting secondary schools and urging people to report homophobic crime. "If we know, then we can combat it and put more resources towards it," he says.

But at the Joiners, David Pollard cannot help thinking about the ease with which abuse can turn to violence.

"When it's extreme, there's an assumption that the people behind it wanted it to be extreme on that occasion," he says. "But I think the distinction that's being made is perhaps incorrect. These things are often only less violent than they could be because the people involved don't have something sharp on them. It's the recklessness of it."